Nicola Sturgeon has shelved plans for a quick second referendum on Scottish independence after dire spending figures and a fall in public support for leaving the UK.

The first minister told Holyrood on Tuesday that her government only planned to issue a consultation on a draft referendum bill – a measure which falls short of tabling new legislation in this year’s programme for government.

Two months after telling reporters a referendum was “highly likely” within the next two years, she told MSPs that that bill would now only be introduced if she believed it was the best option for Scotland.

Her officials later said that consultation process could start at some time in the next year, with no target date in mind for its launch or its conclusion. Sturgeon’s official legislative timetable, the programme for government, described the referendum as an option and not as a goal.

Well, well, well.

Looks like a tacit admission that running a creaking, statist, big government petro-state north of the border – all based on a fiercely irrational cult of personality – doesn’t produce the kind of dynamic, resilient country which could frolic its way to independence without an economic care in the world after all.

Who could have possibly known?

Postscript: But let us not be too smug. The same report also tells us that the SNP plans to use the Scottish government’s discretionary fiscal powers cut the outrageously high Air Passenger Duty tax by 50% – a good first step in reducing it even further, back to the kind of levels which no longer put passengers off flying to or connecting through the UK:

She confirmed that the SNP would cut air passenger duty at Scottish airports by 50% from April 2018 to stimulate spending, a plan lambasted by Labour and the Scottish Greens as it would damage efforts to tackle climate change.

The day that the Conservative Party can lecture Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish National Party on pro-consumer, supply-side economic reform with a straight face will be the day when Philip Hammond stands at the despatch box and promises an even greater cut in APD for the rest of the UK in his first Budget.

Until then, the Conservatives continue to disappoint expectations, preferring to virtue-signal their environmentalist credentials and rob leisure and business travellers of their money than usher in the aviation revolution that this country sorely needs.